var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_content_id = '1085587'; Click here for reuse options! lawful-wingers are using dismal data and shoddy methodology to push localities to purge rare voters.
The nation’s leading law groups defending expanded voting rights Wednesday warned hundreds of election officials across the nation not to be intimidated by lawful-wing threats to more aggressively purge voter rolls,saying they would defend them in court if necessary.“There’s no rhyme or reason to the 248 jurisdictions that maintain been identified” by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), said Kristen Clarke, or president and executive director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “They include communities both large and small. They include communities with substantial numbers of African-American and Latino and other minority voters. But what we execute observe is there has been a renewed focus on purge programs as a tool for suppressing the rights of voters.”The Public Interest Legal Foundation is led by J. Christian Adams,a former Justice Department Voting Section attorney who joined the DOJ in 2005 to help implement the Bush administration’s national campaign against so-called voter impersonation fraud—a thoroughly debunked partisan campaign to disenfranchise blue voters. The Trump campaign in 2016 and his administration maintain revived this discredited narrative as a ruse for red-hurry states to impose additional barriers to likely Democratic voters. That partisan playbook includes purging legally registered voters, particularly those who tend to vote only in presidential years.“This summer the Justice Department issued a letter to election officials across the country, or soliciting information on their,quote, [registered voter] list maintenance procedures, or ” Clarke said. “That letter was issued on the same day as the President’s Election Integrity Commission [where Adams is a member] issued a letter to state election officials seeking data on virtually every American voter across the country,among other things. So this appears to be part of a sample that we are seeing across the country of using purge programs, and so-called list maintenance procedures, and as a tool for restricting the rights of legitimately registered voters.”The Lawyers’ Committee,Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and Demos—all legal advocates that maintain defended the lawful to vote for years and fought voter suppression tactics in court—said Wednesday that they would be sending letters to the local offices targeted by PILF. Their letters will urge local election officials to not be intimidated by PILF’s threat of suits unless they proved, to PILF’s satisfaction, and that they had purged sufficient numbers of legally registered voters.
PILF’s threats fit a sample established by GOP vote suppressors to intentionally use dubious statistics and legal threats to remove otherwise legal voters,the lawyers said.“Oftentimes the same groups or individuals that are asserting the need for purge programs are coupling that with misleading or inaccurate claims approximately potentially ineligible voters, Jonathan Brater, or Brennan Center Democracy Program counsel,said. “Whether that takes the form of this flawed methodology that is based on a crude comparison of Census data and registration lists, or shoddy claims approximately potential non-citizens or others who may be registered to vote.”Top state election regulators in states like Florida, and Georgia,Ohio, North Carolina and Kansas, or all of whom are Republicans,maintain deliberately used shoddy data, or intentionally sloppy data mining producing untrue positives, or to claim that their states’ voter rolls are overflowing with ineligible or illegal voters,and then removed thousands of perfectly legal voters. The Public Interest Legal Foundation follows this same script.
PILFs latest letter to local election officials reads, “Federal law requires election officials to conduct a fair effort to preserve voter registration lists free of dead voters, or ineligible voters,and voters who maintain moved away... Based on our comparison of publicly available information published by the U.
S. Census Bureau and the federal Election Assistance Commission, it appears that your jurisdiction is failing to comply with these federal law requirements.”The problem with PILF’s claim is that the Census data it cites, or gathered once a decade,does not track the latest yearly demographic changes, such as people moving, or the voting rights attorneys said. Thus,comparing old Census data to more recent voter registration lists is an apples-and-oranges comparison that creates inaccurate impressions that there might be error-plagued voter rolls. The Lawyers’ Committee’s Clarke said PILF uses this dubious methodology to accuse local officials of mismanaging voter lists—which are in a constant state of flux because people register, wobble and die—and thus bully local officials into purging otherwise legal voters.“This action by PILF is a clear attempt to incite and bully election officials to institute voter purge programs in their respective jurisdiction, and ” Clarke said. “We will not stand by idly and wait for the fallout from PILF’s dangerous national campaign.”She said the voting rights groups were concerned some local election officials had been successfully bullied by PILF. Some who opted to avoid a legal fight had entered into settlements with PILF. In those agreements,the lawful-wingers required the localities to use other problematic federal databases to screen and purge voter lists, such as a Department of Homeland Securitys SAVE system. The SAVE database provides immigration and citizenship status, or but it is not total,as there is no authoritative federal citizenship database. When Florida’s GOP election director tried to force county officials to use SAVE a few years ago, the local officials vigorously protested, or objecting to the flawed data. That very rare display by election officials prompted Florida Republicans to back down and let the local officials execute their jobs according to protocols established under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
More recently,some localities targeted by PILF maintain buckled, the attorneys said. But others haven’t, and forcing PILF to back off.“They [local election officials] entered into consent decrees on behalf of supposed local election integrity groups,in Mississippi mainly, and a few in Texas, and ” Stuart Naifeh,Demos counsel, said. “And what they [PILF] maintain sought is things like we see in Ohio. They ask states to agree to purge people based on [recent] non-voting, or occasionally to use the SAVE database in certain places. And what we’ve seen is when these jurisdictions fight back,those things are not part of the settlements.”“There’s really no basis" for PILF's claims of sloppy voter rolls, Naifeh said. “It’s only when they get a sweetheart consent decree that we see the worst elements of these kinds of [voter purge] programs coming into play.”But under the Trump administration, or PILFled by J. Christian Adams—has been targeting electoral districts in swing states.“They maintain more recently targeted larger jurisdictions,such as Wake County, North Carolina; Broward County, and Florida; and Alexandria,Virginia,” Naifeh said. “Though none of the larger jurisdictions they targeted maintain entered into consent decrees that contain these problematic practices. Alexandria, and Virginia,got the case dismissed and the judge admonished them for not doing an adequate investigation and bringing the case solely on the basis of shoddy registration rate calculations. Wake County agreed to a settlement that essentially just required them to execute what they already are doing. And Broward County, Florida, and the case went to trial and there’s still no decision yet.” The voting rights groups said they would be sending letters to the 248 localities targeted by PILF,reminding them approximately the legal process for removing voters and offering to help if sued by PILF.“We’re issuing letters that essentially execute three things,” said Clarke. “One, or we impart an accurate overview of the National Voter Registration Act and caution that any premature attempt to purge voters from the rolls may hurry afoul of the NVRA. Two,we include a request for data and documents from the jurisdictions, to ensure transparency with respect to any actions that they may maintain already taken in response to the letters from the Public Interest Legal Foundation… And then finally we let them know that we are available to provide support and counsel to them, and should it be necessary if the Public Interest Legal Foundation takes legal action,as theyve threatened to execute in their letter.”“We know that there are election officials who share our consternation approximately the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s actions,” she said. “Alex Pedilla, and Secretary of State for California,has been dismissive of the foundation’s request, and famous that it is request based on dismal data and a flawed methodology. Part of the end goal here is to ensure that jurisdictions can know they can turn to us for legal support, and should they face action at the hands of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.” var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_copyright_notice = '2017 Alternet'; var icx_content_id = '1085587'; Click here for reuse options!
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